This invention relates to illuminated displays formed from light-transmitting materials.
In the past, designs or symbols have been etched, engraved, or otherwise cut into the surface of glass, acrylic, or other light-transmitting members, and a light source has been put adjacent to the light-transmitting member to form an illuminated display. The visual effect is that the engraved or etched image appears to be brighter than the rest of the member and appears to be floating in space. This technique has been used for point-of-sale advertising, awards, artwork, and so forth.
While the image formed by this illuminated display is very attractive and appealing, the prior art displays have a number of disadvantages. First, the engraving process is quite expensive. A solution to this problem has been to injection mold the light-transmitting member so that the design is molded into the material and does not have to be cut into it. However, tooling and set-up costs are expensive, and it is generally necessary to make a run of at least one thousand pieces (usually over 20,000 pieces) in order to recover the tooling costs. In addition, the time required to make the tooling and set up the molding process causes a delay in turn-around time.
Further, the engraving, or molding techniques cannot create half-tones or shades of gray which are necessary for reproducing photographs of the human face, landscapes, and other three-dimensional images. Etching techniques can be used to create half-tone images, but they do not transmit light as brilliantly as the construction of the present invention.
If a colored image is desired, it is known in the art to use a colored acrylic material or a colored light source or to adhere a strip of colored material to the edge of the acrylic which comes into direct contact with the light source. However, it is not possible under known methods to make a multicolored image.